The ATP has announced significant Challenger Tour improvements. Record events, more prize money, and an optimized calendar.

Challenger Tour Improvements

Here are the Challenger Tour improvements as laid out by the ATP tour.

1) Category Simplification

The ATP will phase out the Challenger 90 and 110 categories, reducing the number of categories from six to four. Starting in 2023, the core categories will be:

• Challenger 50
• Challenger 75
• Challenger 100
• Challenger 125

In addition, ATP will introduce three new premium Challenger 175 events during the second week of ATP Masters 1000 tournaments in Indian Wells, Rome, and Madrid, with prize money of $220,000.

2) Record Prize Money

The total prize money amount will increase from 13.2 million USD to 21.1 million USD in 2023. In addition, round-by-round prize money distributions will improve earnings in the earlier rounds of events. This should make life on the tour a little easier for players outside the top 100.

3) Enhanced Calendar

There will be 12 more events, from 183 to 195, in 2023. The Challenger tour calendar will also align better with the ATP tour to deliver a better balance of tournaments in terms of surfaces and regions.

ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi says

 “The Challenger Tour is the launchpad of men’s professional tennis. Today’s announcement is a critical step forward for the entire ecosystem. The new plan increases earnings potential for players and improves the balance of tournament categories, surfaces and regions. It also puts a renewed focus on raising tournament standards. This is also just the beginning. Our team is committed to delivering further enhancements in the coming months and years.”

Richard Glover, Vice President of the ATP Challenger Tour, says

“The health of the ATP Challenger Tour is critical for the future of our sport, and our in-depth review revealed significant opportunities to strengthen this pathway. While we are taking a long-term approach to grow the Challenger Tour, these changes will provide an immediate boost from 2023 onwards. We look forward to executing these reforms next season and building on this progress in the near future. There is more to come, so watch this space.”

How emotional can you get on a tennis court? As most of you know, very emotional! There is a limit, of course, but where does it go?

And when I ask the question about how emotional you can get on a tennis court, I don't Naomi Osaka not wanting to continue a match because a person in the crowds scream “You suck!”. I think people in the public eye need to expect that. Now you don't even need to be famous to get some nasty comments. You just need to be on social media.

However, this question mainly refers to in what way you can show anger. Joy is also an emotion, but rarely people show too much happiness out there. We'd rather seen a period of various form of racquet abuse, which in unlucky circumstances can lead to something more. Zverev's racquet attack was more about the umpire than himself, so that was the worst incident in my opinion, while both Kyrgios‘ and Brooksby's racquet throws could have led to something even worse if the racquet had landed badly.

What is the ATP doing?

ATP is not known to discipline unruly players fast and hard. It's more about fines according to the regulations. But this is what ATP Chairman Gaudenzi had to say about recent racquet attacks. I got the quote from tennis.com

“The first three months of the season have seen an unusual frequency of high-profile incidents involving unsportsmanlike conduct,” said ATP CEO Andrea Gaudenzi in the notice. “This includes serious cases of verbal and racquet abuse.

“We have seen too many dangerous moments, with officials or ball persons caught in the crossfire of aggressive or disrespectful conduct. These incidents shine a bad light on our sport. This conduct affects everyone and sends the wrong message to our fans, especially young fans.”

“‘Effective immediately, and as we head into the clay court swing, the ATP officiating team has been directed to take a stricter stance in judging violations of the Code of Conduct,” it has been said in a statement to the players on the tour.

There is yet to be any formal changes in regulations, but according to sources, the ATP is currently seeing if anything needs to be revised.

Your thoughts?

What do you think the ATP should do? And is there anything that will be effective enough to calm boiling emotions on the tennis court. Playing tennis can make the calmest person into a madman and most of us that play the game knows the feeling of wanting to break every racquet in your bag just to let off some steam. Can you get the players to behave better with firmer rules or stronger enforcement of them? Or will this kind of thing keep on happening?

How emotional can you get on a tennis court? I'm curious to know!

In Acapulco, Alexander Zverev attacked an umpire (he didn't hit him directly, but it was close enough). But what was Zverev's penalty?

The attack wasn't pretty and the tennis world seemed to agree that some kind of suspension was in order for hothead Zverev (he still has his abuse allegation from the ex-girlfriend, so this didn't look good for his brand image). He forfeited his Acapulco prize money (around $30k) and got a $40k fine. Still, since these things easily set a precedent and it was a very ugly situation, everyone and their mother expected a suspension.

What is Zverev's penalty?

A few days ago the ATP Announced that Zverev receives an eight-week suspension and additional fine of US$25,000. That sounds all fine and good until you read the rest of the press release. This is what it says:

The ATP’s Senior Vice President of Rules & Competition, Miro Bratoev, has completed his review of Alexander Zverev’s conduct in Acapulco, Mexico, where the player was withdrawn from the tournament for Unsportsmanlike Conduct. The review determined that Zverev committed Aggravated Behaviour under the Player Major Offense section of ATP Rules.

As a result, Zverev has been issued an additional fine of US$25,000 and a suspension for a period of eight weeks from any ATP-sanctioned event. However, the fine and suspension are withheld on the condition that, over a probation period ending 22 February 2023 (one year from the incident), the player does not incur a further Code Violation that results in a fine for:

Unsportsmanlike Conduct based upon an act, such as disrespectful or aggressive behaviour directed towards an official, opponent, spectator, or other person during or upon conclusion of a match Verbal or Physical Abuse of an official, opponent, spectator, or any other person while on-court or on-site. If the conditions are met, the penalties will be formally dismissed following the completion of the probation period. If the conditions are not met, the penalties will be invoked after any appeal process is exhausted.

However…

The word “however” is usually an important one. And in the context of Zverev's situation it basically means that they thought the fine was enough unless he does it again. Then he will get suspended. For eight weeks.

Is this enough? Don't you want to set an example about these things? I think this pretty much tells players that if you lose your head badly once, it means nothing, but if you do it twice, that's another story. Imagine if it worked the same way for crimes.

Not sure what you think about this, but my general feeling about the ATP's handling of this and similar situations is “lukewarm” and “political”. Meaning that they are afraid to take any stronger actions or words about pretty much anything. It's evident that the ATP is a highly political organisation that treads carefully and don't want to stir any pots. It's a shame, because we don't want to live in a society without backbone. Does the ATP have one?

Your thoughts?

There will be new rules at the Next Gen Finals taking place between the 9-13 November in Milan. What do we think about them?

The ATP and the FIT (Italian Tennis Federation) has announced new rules at Next Gen Finals in Milan. The idea of the tournament is to highlights the most exciting talents at age 21 and under. Like during every other year this event has been staged, the rules are different to experiment with ways to speed up the game.

You can read more about the event on the official website. This is what I wrote about the 2019 edition.

Players this year will be: Alcaraz, Korda, Musetti, Nakashima, Cerundolo, Baez, Rune and Gaston. Quite a field!

Most things are not new, such as:

• First-to-4, Best-of-5 Set Matches
• No-Ad Scoring
• Free Fan Movement
• Live Electronic Line Calling
• Shot Clock
• Video Review
• Towel Racks

What's new?

Shorter Warmups: Down from 4 minutes to 1.
Courtside Coaching: Coaching opened up from the side-lines. No more headsets.
Net Cams: Your front-row seat, right at the heart of the action.
Limited Medical Time-Outs: One per player per match.
Timed Bathroom Breaks: Max 3 minutes (+ up to 2 for change of attire).

Ross Hutchins, Tournament Director says: “This event has always been about pushing the boundaries and trialling new ideas. Ultimately, we want to continue improving the experience for our fans. It has become an incredible platform to spotlight the next generation of superstars coming up in the game, with several of the concepts we’ve tested going on to be adopted on the Tour. We’re thrilled to continue that journey of innovation in Milan.”

What do we think about these changes?

I think the what we've seen adopted to the tour is no-ad scoring in doubles (but that was there before, right?), electronic line calling, shot clock and towel racks. I'm personally not a huge fan of changing the brilliant scoring format of tennis, but I do like the on-court coaching that will give us insight into how players think.

The no-ad scoring is not ideal to me either, because I don't think everything in life needs to be boiled down to a shorter format. The tennis scoring system is one of the beauties of the sport and we rarely suffer from matches being too long. It's rather the opposite: longer matches build drama and gets the audience invested.

Why do we watch 3-hour podcasts and 7-season Netflix series instead of movies? Not everything needs to be a TikTok, if you know what I mean.

Okay, maybe I'm a salty middle-aged guy. Let me know what you think about these format changes.

I previously wrote about the move of the BNP Paribas Open to October. Now the dates are set for Indian Wells 2021.

The ATP has issued a press release with Q4 Calendar Updates, including dates for the BNP Paribas Open (ATP Masters 1000) in Indian Wells. It will take place as an eight-day event in week 41 and the dates 10-17 October. The men's event will feature a 56 Main Draw Singles, 28 Main Draw Doubles and 28 Singles Qualifying draw.

ATP has also announced that the Rolex Shanghai Masters will be held as intended, likely in week 40 (TBC). But sadly, the  China Open (Beijing) and Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships (Tokyo), both ATP 500 events scheduled in Week 40, have confirmed their cancelation in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The Grand Prix Hassan II (Marrakech) will not take place in 2021, having announced postponement from its April dates earlier in the year.

The updated 2021 ATP Tour calendar can be viewed here.